This morning as I was doing my daily reading of the Bible, this verse jumped up at me: I will praise thee, O LORD, with my whole heart; I will shew forth all thy marvellous works (Psalms 9:1). As I continued to read the rest of the chapter, three questions kept coming to my mind: 1) What am I holding back from the Lord? 2) What is keeping me from praising Him with my whole heart? and 3) Why do I not share the blessings from the Lord with others? I’ve been a Christian since 2006 and have seen the Lord working within my life in some pretty amazing ways, yet in light of all three of the questions, I could not believe how difficult it was to honestly answer them.
What am I holding back from the Lord?
This is a simple and straight-forward question. What am I holding back from the Lord? It is fairly easy to start with the most obvious ones, such as praise, worship, and giving. But we must go deeper than those – what am I holding back? Many of us have a true friend that we share every aspect of our life with; for some this may be a spouse and for others, it may be a childhood friend. Remember the hurt feelings and shock you felt when you found out they held something back from you? Remember how you felt when you found out through someone else about it? If so, you can probably imagine how God feels when He knows we are holding things back from Him. There have been times where I have not had the faith in Him I should have. There are times I have not been as grateful for his mercy, grace, and blessings as I should have. There are times I know I needed to ask His forgiveness for sin, yet I could not bring myself to pray about it.
I think about conversations I have had with other Christians in the past who have told me they were surrendered completely to the Lord’s will. One even told me that he believed that the Lord was calling him into full-time ministry and he was willing to do whatever the Lord wanted him to do – except be a missionary. At the time we laughed it off, but now, with a fresh perspective, he was holding something back from the Lord. He was not completely surrendered. Can the Lord still use him? Absolutely, but he will never receive the joy that comes from serving the Lord as long as he is holding something back. I think of the exchange between Jesus and the rich young ruler as told by Luke: And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God. Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother. And he said, All these have I kept from my youth up. Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me (Luke 18:18-22). To paraphrase this passage, Jesus was telling this young man that he had to be willing to surrender everything he owned and all that he was and all his personal power and prestige in order to follow after Jesus. He could not hold anything back.
What is keeping me from praising with my whole heart?
This is another question where it is easy to claim that I’m already doing this. In all honesty, I know that it’s not true. Just as I hold things back from the Lord, I also hold back my praise from Him. David wrote, And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee: for thou, LORD, hast not forsaken them that seek thee (Psalms 9:10). If we are His child, then we have every reason to praise Him with our whole heart. Through the Bible we have the testimony of God’s love for us and the proof of His great salvation offered to us. So if we have every reason to praise Him with our whole heart, why is it so difficult? Each one of us who have accepted Jesus as our Lord and personal Savior can think of at least a half-dozen things He has done: Sing praises to the LORD, which dwelleth in Zion: declare among the people his doings (Psalms 9:11).
As I honestly began to consider this question, the first thing that came to my mind is unconfessed sin. Unconfessed sin will separate us from the blessings and joy that Jesus brings. We feel conviction brought about by the Holy Spirit and and not repent of our sins and praise the Lord, we decide to hide ourselves from Him. The last thing we want to do when running from the Lord is to praise Him. We also are hesitant to praise the Lord with our whole hearts when we know things are not as they should be between us and someone else. We also find it hard to praise the Lord with our entire heart when we know He has set something before us and for whatever reason, we don’t do it. It’s hard to praise the Lord when we are not living fully in His will.
